Best Ways To Improve Collaboration on Your Team

There has been much discussion about how the process of taking each individual creative and turn them into a group of innovative collectives. However, even in high functioning collaborative teams, everyone has to play their part. So, the question is how can we repeatedly get successful, creative, and innovative results from team collaboration.

Two Researchers, Andrew B. Hargadon, a professor a Davis University, and Beth Bechky, a professor a NYU, did a study on how “collections of creatives become creative collectives.” In the end, they found that there are four interdependent exercises that can bring about occurrences of “collective creativity”.

The Help-Seeking Creative

The help seeking creative is the type of individual that can not only recognize when they come across an issue they cannot solve, but they can are comfortable reaching out to others. happens when an individual employee recognizes that they have a problem they cannot solve on their own and they reach out to their peers for help.

This is a behavior that you will want to encourage among your team. Behaviors such as this will help to generate moments that can spark spontaneous and innovative insights.

The Help-Giving Creative

This type of creative wishes to put their time and effort into helping their peers find solutions for their problem. This behavior should also be encouraged as it could lead to positive engagement that can flow throughout your organization.

The Reflective Reframing Creative

The reflective creative is one that will help their peers see their issues from a different point of view. This behavior is just as instrumental to your organization’s growth as help seeking and help giving are and in turn should be also hold a place of value in terms of how you envision the collaboration of your team.

The Reinforcement Creative

Simply put, the reinforcement creative is the type to constantly promote the collaborative environment you wish to see among your team and is always seeking new ways to reinforce the shared values and beliefs of your organization.

The best way to improve collaboration on your team is to recognize the four behavior types and encourage employees to embrace them.